How Absurd
by tardisbluelady63
Summary: Jareth reflects, and hopes that Sarah is reflecting as well, because something isn't quite right. Rated 'M' for mature themes, and some language.
1. Chapter 1

"_Sarah…"_

He sighed her name, and the reverberation of his despair cast a chill over the land. He knew she still heard him, always there, singing songs in her mind.

"_Everything I've done, I've done for you."_

"_Sarah…"_

He wondered if she were there, touching the mirror as he had so often seen her do… yes, he still went Aboveground to watch her, just to catch a glimpse of her. He watched her in the crystals, when he could, but he had grown so weary.

'_How you've turned my world, you precious thing_.'

How deeply humiliating that a mortal girl could reduce him to this. How absurd, to have offered everything only to have… _nothing…_

'_I move the stars for no one.'_

He wanted her here. He wanted her to never return. He wanted her as his Queen, sitting becrowned beside him, sitting straight up, with her lovely pink lips slightly parted in a smile. He wanted her as his slave, degraded, sitting at his feet, begging with her large doe eyes, pleading, completely under his control. He wanted her to live with him, and to die without him. He wanted… he wanted…

"Sarah!" He whispered in desperation, the name spilling from him as a venomous curse and reverent prayer at once.

How she'd grown. It was so short a time here… time ran so differently in the Above. He began to worry, because less and less would she stand at the mirror, now. Less and less would she stare into the depths of her reflection, warm in the knowledge that there was so much more there than others saw. Less and less would she turn and stop at the sound of his wings flicking, slicing through wintry air like so many feathered blades.  
He became frightened. She was forgetting. She was forgetting, and he had never needed her more desperately.

She was becoming a woman, now, and it was little more than a child that he had loved before. A child's fantasies had he bent before. Sometimes when she stopped, sometimes when he sliced the air, he could see the hope and regret in her eyes. He wondered if, perhaps, his Sarah would come to him. She was forgetting…

He breathed deep, feeling the now-familiar stabbing sensation within his breast that made it difficult to breathe. Gods, it was getting worse!

Painfully, he gathered up a crystal, and leaned back to gaze into it. Surely enough, there she was, standing at the mirror. It had been so long since the last time she looked, and who knew how long it would be until she looked again? Who knew how weak he would be when the time came. Waiting was over… it must be now. Gathering what strength he had left, he pushed out at her, giving it everything he had left. He spoke her name, commanding, pleading.

"Sarah…"

How absurd it was to desire something so much. How absurd to offer everything… how absurd… how absurd that he should be reduced to this.

Before everything went black, he thought, or perhaps imagined, that she spoke his name in return.


	2. Chapter 2

_((__**A/N:**__ I just wanted to let everyone know that this was going to be a one-shot unless I got some positive reviews, and yay! Thank you! I have a storyline of course, but bear with me as this is my first fic. I write a lot, but this is the first time anything I've ever written has been seen by human eyes._

_Secondly, I wanted to say that at this point in time in my fic, Jareth is extremely dark. Things aren't right in the Underground, and that includes him. Rated M for a reason, and if dark themes offend, please don't read this. I will not tolerate flames.))_

It had been a long time since she last tried the mirror. She had been calling and calling.

"_Should you need us…"_

She needed them. She had no response. She hadn't heard the flap of wings; she hadn't heard… everything from beyond the veil had been silent for months and months. Friends who were her only friends were oddly absent, and it had never been this long between conversations.

Her dreams had been troubled. She saw images almost every night of an owl with broken wings, trying so hard to fly, but it was stifled again and again. She saw images of a little bumpy man listlessly wandering the tattered remnants of a garden, while beetle-black winged bodies twisted and writhed around his head. She knew these things wanted to *hurt* the little man, they wanted to hurt everything, because the terrible buzzing of their own wings echoed inside their tiny minds, and drove out simple thoughts. Some of them, she could see, were dropping dead of exhaustion, simply forgetting to eat because the buzzing that filled their little heads wouldn't *stop*. They knew that if it would stop, they could remember how to *hurt* the little man, and everything would be better.  
She saw a hulking, two-horned figure calling and calling to the landscape, desperately trying to regain something that had been lost to no avail. Every day it called and called, lonely, trying to fill a void that was left by the loss of *something*. And she knew that somewhere, there was a tiny desperate knight that wandered the nightly fog, and that fog was oppressive and confined. The poor little knight was without purpose, and she keened every night, waking herself with the tangible sense of _loss_.

These dreams disturbed and frightened her, because she often felt that there was something lost that couldn't be regained. She knew if she could just be allowed to help…

That evening, however, was different. She heard her name, but it was strained, faint, and distorted. It sounded desperate. Perhaps she had imagined it? Cautiously, she made her way to the mirror, pushing thoughts of her nightly frights to the side. She had never been cowardly, this much was unchanged.

She reached out to touch the glass, expecting to feel something. Perhaps the glass would feel warm to the touch, perhaps it would yield to her touch. Her touch. But… nothing ever responded to her touch there, did it? No, her power had always been in her words.

"Hoggle?" She asked her reflection, almost but not quite feeling silly. "Didymus? Ludo?"

No change. She closed her eyes, sighed, and smoothed out her shirt, standing straighter. She tried all three names again, louder and more assured. She tried to push every ounce of want, need, belief into her words, trying to force herself past the barrier.

Nothing.

"_Sarah…" _

She heard her name, sounding terribly desperate, pulling and tickling at the back of her mind. Gathering her courage, she knew now who to respond to.

"Jareth." She whispered with endless guilt and longing. "Jareth, please."

And she was falling, falling into a muggy nothing that wouldn't let her breathe.


	3. Chapter 3

((**A/N: **_To my reviewers and followers, kind, and precious few, thank you for your patience. As a reward, here's a long chapter! Honestly, I was not expecting this story to receive any sort of attention at all, so I am glad and grateful to you kind folks. Enjoy!))_

"You…" She heard a voice above her. She was lying on something hard, and her mind only seemed able to register that fact. The energy in the room was suddenly suffocating, and Sarah tried to pull at the collar of her blouse, only to be startled by the heaviness of her limbs.

She was about to call out to the voice, so close to asking it for assistance, when she felt a vicious tug on her waist-long plait. She cried out, unable to resist as Jareth wrapped her hair around his gloved fist and *yanked*.

"Get up, girl, get UP!"

Sarah could barely register that the voice was vaguely familiar when she was pulled onto her feet by her braid, some half-formed protest spilling from her lips before it was cut off by a cry of pain.

"Why, how are you here?!" She heard a masculine voice snarl into her ear, a surprisingly strong masculine form bracing her against its body. Despite the intimacy of the position, she felt anything but. She was frightened. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that if she could just *remember*, if she could just speak the name of the rather violent person behind her, that he would relent, he would release her.

"I-I don't know… let go… hurts." She spoke, startled again by the roughness in her voice and the dryness in her throat.

The deep voice laughed, but it didn't sound like it harbored any humor. In fact, it sounded a bit hysterical. "Oh, it *hurts*? Sarah Williams is going to give me a lecture on pain?"

Were she in her right mind, she may have retorted that she was in no condition to lecture anyone, but the fist dragging her around by her skull made it a bit difficult to think. In fact, she thought wildly, everything was difficult to think about. Sarah Williams, that was her, but beyond that she was certain of nothing.

"Please!" She cried in her oddly rough voice. "Let go!"

That same slightly hysterical laugh sounded in her ears. "As always, my girl, I shall do as you ask." He whipped her around, and she caught sight of a large chair before she was dashed against it. Her head collided with the edge of it, something that appeared to be a long curl of ivory, and she cried out. She felt something hot and liquid creep down toward her eyes, but before she could properly process this, the chair began to burn at the exposed skin of her arms. She screamed and scrabbled out of the chair, crashing to the stone floor.

"Don't you like my throne, dearest?" She looked up at the voice, finally able to face her abuser. She gasped at the sight she saw. A cascade of straw-colored silk framed an angular and furious face, which topped a slender figure shrouded in black and grey fabric. More startling than his harsh appearance and the madness in his eyes was the aura of crackling energy that seemed to ebb and flow around him. There was a tickle of recognition in the back of her mind, and she had a fleeting thought that she really ought to know who this was, but when he descended upon her once again, it was gone.

"There was a time you might have had one like it. One upon which you could sit without discomfort, one offered freely and lovingly. Upon that throne, you might have felt each stream and tide of the land, of MY land." With each word, the man stepped menacingly, but slowly closer, his eyes promising pain. "Beneath your fingertips, you would have felt every billow of air, each cadence of each creature, tuned with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Mine, yours, it wouldn't have mattered." He seemed to be muttering to himself now, and himself alone. "You would have made sport of the stars, and slaves of kings. Your rule and precedent would have been complete, effortless. Any command that spilled from your lips would be nothing less than law, and we would have thrived. But look!" He snatched her up once more by her braid, yanked her to her feet, and marched her to a nearby window. "Look what you've done!"

She looked, helpless to disobey. There was little she could see but mist, a swirling mist in perpetual, unnatural twilight. She didn't understand how she knew that this was wrong, but it *felt* wrong.

"Please. Water, please." Her heart was hammering, her throat more dry than ever. "Can't think, I can't think."

There was a pause, an intake of breath from the man behind her. "Water." He spoke as if it were a rather confusing notion, but soon she found herself once more manipulated by her hair. She made a wild mental note to never wear her hair in a plait again, but the thought was dashed as the room spun in a blur and she found herself pitched headfirst into something very cold and very wet. In her shock, she inhaled, and came up spluttering. Pulling back, shaking errant strands of wet hair from her face, she registered that she had been plunged into a large barrel of cool, crisp water. She dipped back down, any notion of pride forgotten in an instant, and drank like a horse.

When she was sated, she pushed her hair back from her face in an arc of droplets, enjoying the cold harshness of it. She hoped it would clear her head.

He was behind her once again, this time not touching her, staring at her as though she were a wild animal with uncertain intent.

"Please, what's going on?" She asked, pleased to find that her voice worked a little better.

"MY LORD!" He spat, voice full of force and volume. "Your Majesty! My KING! Sir, Sire, or…" He gave her a small, wicked smile, and she found this more disturbing than the previous fury, "Master… to you." He pierced her with a stare, and hidden within it was something dark and unstable that she didn't quite want to name. "You, girl, may call me any of these things, but you WILL address me in accordance to my position."

Something flickered, almost pleasantly in the back of her mind, and she spoke without thinking. "Can't I just call you Jar—" The rest of the name was stifled beneath a gloved hand as he viciously cupped her mouth. The recognition was gone as quickly as it had flickered into existence, and she cried out with discomfort as his fingers mashed her lips against her teeth until she tasted copper.

"NO." He said more calmly, staring into her eyes. "No, girl, you must earn that right." His voice took on a hint of breathiness, and as she stared back into his eyes, unable to look away, she felt herself growing inexplicably sleepy.


	4. Where Have All the Goblins Gone?

((**A/N: **Sorry about the slow update. Work, as usual, has gotten in my way! We have new management, and as such have been changing our schedules around left and right, up, down and around. Still, to my few reviewers, I must say thank you, for it is you I have in mind whenever updating this creeps into my head!  
Enough rambles. Here's the next chappie!))

Jareth stared at her while she slept. He didn't know how long he watched her, but his rather fragmented thoughts while he did so were decidedly troubled. How had she come back? Why was she unable to remember anything?  
Despite his railing anger at her sudden appearance, when he had taken her by the temples and pushed out a strong suggestion for her to sleep toward her mind, it had been a kindness to her. Even as he threw her about by that long and luscious braid, he had worried for her, somewhere in the back of his head.

Still, he was glad he had done it. For himself. As much as he was certain she needed rest, he was certain he needed time to work this out. There had been a sudden, frightening flash of recognition in her when she almost stated his name, and he had squashed it down viciously. She mustn't speak his name, not until he was sure she remembered everything.

She didn't remember. This thought filled him with a sudden, blind rage, and he threw himself up out of the chair he had sat upon to watch her slumber and began to pace, the stone beneath his feet smoking slightly with each enraged step. WHY didn't she remember?

HIM! She had forgotten HIM! His thoughts began to spiral, then, as they had been wont to do of late. Everything in his field of vision took on a red hue, and he… he… what?

He felt something beneath his gloved hand, though he didn't recall grasping anything. Blinking, he looked down to see what his hand was resting upon, and to his horror, saw it wrapped around the sleeping girl's throat.

He hadn't squeezed, but he ached to. Something in him wanted more than anything to grip her throat and *crush*. He released her, and stepped back, breathing deeply. He had to calm himself.

How could he possibly be calm?! How, when things were falling apart around him?! There were barely any goblins left, and he didn't know if they had died, defected to the next kingdom, or succumbed to some sort of stasis!

Did goblins die? He found himself even more disturbed at the thought as he resumed his pacing. He hadn't dwelled on the state of the castle before. Could goblins die? The thought never occurred to him. He had simply *lived*, with little concept of or care for time's passing. If goblins could die, then... perhaps even he was not immune to the ravages of mortals' time.

It was all the doing of this girl in his bed. It was her fault things had fallen into such a state. He didn't understand how, but he knew it was her.

He saw her stir, and was beside her in an instant. When her eyes fluttered open, her first sight was this same man who had tossed her around like a rag doll. Frowning, she noted that her scalp was still mightily sore from his violent conduct. Now, this same rough man was kneeling so they were face to face, and his expression was one of carefully controlled awe. It looked almost as though he was a religious devotee at worship.

When she locked eyes with him, however, the illusion as it must have been was decidedly dashed, and his face was an indifferent mask of barely concealed madness.

"My *head* hurts." She said haughtily, sitting up carefully and speaking as though the events of the day did not affect her otherwise. If nothing else, she thought, she was still a lady, and her dignity would not be compromised.

"Oh?" The man with the mismatched eyes asked dispassionately.

"Of course it does! You can't wield a woman like a sword by the hair and expect anything else!"

He laughed at her then, a fragile sound. "Don't talk to me of expectations, girl."

Something in her mind strained at those words, spoken in that tone, and with a sudden gasp, she recalled something. The recollection was like ice water to her muddled mind.

_I am exhausted from living up to your expectations of me._

"Jare-!" Once again, before the name was out of her mouth, his hand stifled it. She struggled, trying desperately to hold on to the memories, straining with her psyche to hold that name just as hard as her body struggled to buck off the owner of it. She shrieked her fury into the glove upon her face, errant strands of hair framing her wild expression.

She needed those memories! She knew if she could frame that one word that her mental state would repair, reassert itself, and then she could gain some control over the situation at hand. HAND!

She bit down upon the hand against her face as hard as she could, piercing through leather and warm flesh until she tasted a rush of copper meet her tongue. The man above her reeled back with a hiss, and she screamed like a wild thing.

"JARETH! JARETH, JARETH, *JARETH*!" She punctuated each screech of his name with a violent tossing of her head, and everything came rushing back to her.

Ludo, Didymus, Hoggle, biting fairies, pulling hands and crystals!

Panting, she stared up at her King, whose expression was crestfallen. "Sarah, you foolish girl. What have you done?" He asked, his voice breaking with each word.

He leaned down and straddled her slightly heaving body, forcing a cruel kiss to her lips.


End file.
